. . .ndecided customers that "if folks didn't know what they wanted when they come into the store, they better keep away till they find out."

So, in answer to the newcomer's demand, Hod shifted his quid and, with exasperating deliberation, spat in the direction of a sawdust-filled box near which the other was standing.

Without rising from his seat in the one undamaged chair, he answered: "If it's the storekeeper you mean, I'm him." Then, as an after-thought. "Was they somethin' you wanted?"

Bill resented the implied rebuke in the storekeeper's words even more than he resented the bombardment of tobacco juice which barely missed his boots. Take it all in all he was having a rather rough time of it.

The railway people had refused to stop their fast train at Hilarity for his special benefit, and he had been compelled to get off at the nearest division point, some forty miles to the westward, and continue his journey in the. . . Read More